OVERRIDDEN TELEOLOGY AND EDUCATIONAL WORK: ALGORITHMIC REIFICATION IN EDUCATION UNDER INFORMATIONAL CAPITALISM
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.56219/trascendere.v2i8.6298Keywords:
informational capitalism, ontology, algorithmic reification, educational work, teleology of workAbstract
The expansion of digital devices and algorithmic platforms in the educational field is usually approached from instrumental and fragmentary approaches focused on innovation, efficiency or control. This essay proposes a different analytical shift: understanding contemporary educational digitalization as an ontological reconfiguration of educational work under conditions of algorithmic reification. Starting from György Lukács' ontology of social being, labor is conceptualized as a general form of social being, defined by the unity between conscious teleology and causal process. From this perspective, education is defined as a specific modality of social praxis oriented by historical and collective ends, irreducible to any technical function or neutral device. The text argues that educational platformization, far from suppressing educational work, tends to reorganize it under a form of annulled teleology, in which pedagogical ends cease to be produced by collective praxis and become implicit in technical architectures, metrics and algorithmic management systems. This ontological inversion is expressed in the fragmentation of teaching work, the loss of pedagogical autonomy, the fetishization of data and the reification of the educational relationship. Methodologically, the essay is inscribed in the tradition of theoretical-critical analysis, articulating ontological reconstruction and critical review of recent empirical literature on educational platforming. As a central contribution, a proposal for the de-reification of educational work is formulated, neither prescriptive, nor a rejection of technology, but as a restitution of the teleological, social and conscious character of educational praxis in informational capitalism.
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